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Thursday, November 21, 2013

Work-Family Policy in the US

Jane Waldfogel, Professor of Social Work and Public Affairs,
Columbia University

The American family is changing, but our public policies have not
kept pace. In 1967, 2/3 of American children had at least one
stay-at-home parent, and only 1/3 had all their parents working.
Today, because of increases in maternal employment (and single
motherhood), the situation is reversed: 2/3 of children have all
their parents working, and only 1/3 have a stay-at-home parent. In
addition, more workers now have responsibility for elders or other
dependents, due to increased longevity and smaller baby boom
families. These challenges are not unique to the US, but are more
acute here than in peer countries, because our public policies have
not been updated to reflect them.

To meet the needs of children when parents work, and to help adults
caring for the elderly or other dependents, our policies must
provide more comprehensive work-family supports—paid family leave,
other forms of paid leave, workplace flexibility, and child care.
This is particularly true for low-income families who currently
have the least access to such benefits at work and who have fewer
resources with which to buy them. Why is the US such an outlier in
this regard, and what might we be able to do about it?